‘Take them off! Now!’
He slammed his hand down hard and loud on the workbench. My knees went weak and I collapsed in the doorway, but I quickly got back up and walked through the house and straight out the front door. My face was really hot and I felt sick in my stomach. I folded my arms and hunched over and put my head down and walked quickly down the street. Then I heard someone call out.
‘Hey!’
I worried it was the mean lady, so I kept walking.
‘Hey!’
It didn’t sound like her. I stopped and looked around.
‘Over here, dopey!’
I turned and saw the girl from the day before waving from a window of the red-brick house.
‘Nice kicks!’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Hey, you want some brownies? I made like a whole tray. They kind of have the texture of wood, but they taste okay.’
I looked at the ground and shook my head.
‘No. It’s okay.’
But she insisted.
‘Come on!’ she said. ‘I’ll open the door.’
I hesitated. Then I slowly walked up to her house. The door opened and she smiled. She had dimples. She looked different out of her school uniform. Her hair was messy. She wore black jeans and a black t-shirt and her feet were bare.
‘Come on, come in!’ she said.
She turned off the television and picked up the tray of brownies, which were burned on top. She led me through the house like I had been going there for years. It was really clean and nice.
‘I was just watching Buffy, even though I can essentially recite the whole thing. My parents aren’t here. My mum is making my dad try Pilates because he will not shut the fuck up about his sore back. She’s convinced it’s because he has zero flexibility, which is true in every conceivable sense.’
I tried to keep up, but she spoke really fast.
Her room was a mess. The bed was unmade and her clothes and shoes were all over the floor. She had a shelf full of books, and rows of small fantasy figurines on display. Her desk was piled with textbooks.
There was a brass instrument open in a case. She caught me looking at it.
‘It’s a euphonium.’
I nodded slowly. She kicked the case closed and put on a strange accent.
‘It’s naht a tooba! It’s naht!’
I must have looked confused.
‘Schwarzenegger? No? Nobody ever laughs at that. I’m in the school band. My dad says the brass section suits me because I’m full of hot air, so, you know, lame jokes run in the family.’
She sat on her bed and patted a spot for me to sit on.
‘My brother’s home, but he’s still asleep, which is his natural state. Oh! I’m Aggie! Sorry.’
She waved and shook my hand in an awkward way.
‘Actually it’s Agnes. I know. I have the world’s ugliest name. Agnes Meemeduma. My mum’s Scottish and my dad’s Sri Lankan. Apparently my dad insisted that we all had to be burdened with his surname, so my mum was like, well, if you’re going to perpetuate the patriarchy, I’m choosing the first names of our children, which was just a sly excuse to double-fuck us by giving us the names of her grandparents. Why she would knowingly bring Agnes into a new millennium I can’t tell you. Obviously everyone at school calls me Fagness and Faggie. So, it’s been a dream run.’
She rolled her eyes and took a breath.
‘Though when I’m annoying her she calls me the Ag Ness Monster, which is pretty cute. And to be fair to my dad, the alternative was her surname. I’m not even kidding, her maiden name is McNutt. Can you believe it? If my dad wasn’t so obstinately fucking retrograde, we would have been the McNutts. I’ll take the ethnic profiling, thanks. Oh my goodness, I do not shut up. I’m sorry. What’s your name?’
‘Sam. Watson.’
‘See? That’s a good, solid name. You can go anywhere with that name. You’re very … striking, Sam Watson. Is that a weird thing to say? Do you want a brownie? I’m going to, like, plug my mouth with one.’
‘I’m not very hungry.’
Aggie took a chunk of brownie and bit down hard on it with the side of her mouth. A piece broke off with a loud snap and she laughed.
‘It’s okay, my dad’s a dentist. Like, for real.’
‘So what’s your brother’s name?’
‘Oh my God.’ She crunched the brownie and talked with her mouth full. ‘So this is where it’s so unfair. His name is Dylan, which is an objectively stylish name, right? I tried to argue that I should have been called Dylan, but he’s three years older, so he got dibs. Anyway, he doesn’t deserve it. I mean, I’m a genuine nerd, but he’s on a whole different spectrum of social dysfunction. He leaves his room about as often as that fucking groundhog that forecasts the weather, and when he does he just grunts or tries to lecture someone about cryptocurrency.’
She stopped speaking for a moment to try another bite of brownie, but she thought better of it and started laughing again.
‘I think you might have baked them too long,’ I said.
She sighed.
‘Nobody in this house can cook to save themselves. We’re like a primitive tribe or something. Like, we all just huddle around the toaster and poke it with a stick. I really felt like brownies today.’
‘I can make them for you.’
‘Shut up. Seriously?’
I nodded. It felt good that she was impressed.
‘Oh, wait. I think I used all the butter.’
‘That’s okay. There’s other stuff you can use.’
‘What do you mean? What kind of wizardry is that?’
I shrugged.
‘If you made me brownies right now, I would literally die with gratitude.’
Aggie looked at me expectantly.
‘Okay.’
She bounced off the bed and led me to the kitchen. The oven was still on, set at the highest temperature.
I turned it right down.
‘Your oven was too hot.’
‘It’s weird. The recipe said three hundred and something, but our oven doesn’t even go that high.’
‘I think that’s in Fahrenheit. The oven is Celsius.’
She blushed and covered her mouth with her hands.
‘Oh my God, that is genuinely embarrassing. I feel this sudden need to credentialise and tell you that I’m the top of my year in physics and chem, but I actually think that makes it worse.’
‘It’s okay. I’ve made the same mistake before. The person who taught me to cook was American.’
‘You’re very forgiving, Sam Watson.’
I blushed and turned away and opened the pantry door. There was so much food in there. I was amazed. I found a jar of coconut oil.
‘We can use this instead of butter.’
‘Seriously? You really are a wizard.’
All the other ingredients were still on the kitchen bench. I measured the flour while Aggie scraped her brownies into the bin. Even though I was in a different house with somebody I didn’t know, I felt calm.
‘How would you like them to turn out?’ I asked.
‘Honestly, I’ll be dazzled by anything that’s not fossilised.’
‘No, I mean do you want them chewy, or more like cake, or like fudge?’